In recent years the amount of data stored by enterprises and individual users has increased dramatically. As more and more documents are stored on computers and portable electronic devices, information management policies have developed to ensure that back-up copies are available and that data is properly encrypted.
Some systems may define a common information management policy for all files—e.g. all files will be backed up every day. Other systems may vary the information management policy based on the file type. E.g. a different back up policy may be applied to source code files compared to emails or graphic files.